OSIER Accessibility

We have designed this site to ensure that as many people as possible can use it. This includes people with visual impairments and motor or cognitive disabilities.

Styles

You can change colours and background of your web page by selecting one of the three styles that appear on each of the site pages:

We have also provided a separate style which will be activated if you print one of the pages.

Internet Explorer (Windows) - select ‘View’, then ‘Text Size’, then choose ‘larger’ or ‘largest’, or hold down the control key and use Mousewheel while the focus is on the page.
Firefox (Windows or Mac) - select ‘View’, then ‘Text Size’, then choose ‘Increase’, or hold down the ⌘(Apple key on a Mac keyboard) or control key (Windows) together with the plus key.
Safari (for Mac) - select ‘View’, then ‘Make Text Bigger’, or hold down the ⌘(Apple key on a Mac keyboard) together with the plus key.
Opera (Windows or Mac) - select ‘View’, then ‘Zoom’.
Google Chrome (Windows or Mac) - select ‘View’, then ‘Zoom’. This magnifies all elements on a page.

Resource Files

The OSIER projects asks users who provide resources for the site to ensure that these are as accessible as possible. Some resources may include files such as Macromedia Flash animations. These are not accessible to assistive technologies.

Tab and Keyboard Navigation

Keyboard users can tab through the links on each page, without having to use a mouse. Links are highlighted when they are tabbed over. We have added a focus state to links specifically to cater for this.

Mac users may find that they cannot use the tab key to navigate through links, because this is not set up as the default on most Mac versions of browsers. The solution varies from browser to browser:

For Firefox:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences
Click Keyboard & Mouse
Click Keyboard Shortcuts
Below “Full keyboard access”, check the radio button labelled “All controls”

If you are using earlier versions of the OS and browser, you may need to make further changes within the browser settings - follow this link to find out how.

For Safari:

Choose Safari > Preferences > Advanced
By default, the Tab key just focuses form controls – you need to use Option-Tab to focus links as well. To change this, check the checkbox labelled "Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage"

For Opera:

Choose Opera > Preferences > Advanced
Select Shortcuts in the list of settings
Check the “Enable single-key shortcuts” checkbox

Note that keyboard navigation in Opera differs from most other browsers - see below and follow this link.

If you have motor difficulties, the visual browser Opera has keyboard shortcuts to aid navigation, such as:

S to cycle forwards through headings
W to cycle backwards through headings
F8 to give focus to the address field
Z and X to move backward and forward through your browser history

Skip Link

To allow users of screen reader software to navigate these pages more easily, we have added a 'Skip Navigation' link at the top of the page. This gives the user the option to bypass the navigational elements and go straight to the main content.

Recommended Browsers

We have tested this site for display and usability using the following web browsers:

Windows (XP operating system and later) Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8, Mozilla Firefox version 3.5+, Opera version 9.0+, Google Chrome version 10.0+.
Mac (OSX) Mozilla Firefox version 3.5+, Safari version 3.0+, Opera version 9.2+, Google Chrome version 10.0+.

Other Recommendations

Please ensure that cookies, Javascript and images are enabled in your browser. Cookies must be enabled to carry across the style selected.

Useful Information

There are several other things that you can do to improve your experience whilst using the internet. The following websites provide useful information on customizing webpages:

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